Strabismus and Fetal Alcohol

I am a big fan of the unsaid obvious.  Perhaps the best example was the fact that AIDS is passed by anal intercourse.  Sorry Magic. This deference of reality to propriety demonstrates the dangers of hypocrisy.  I remember the idiot virgin clubs where they proudly refrained from sex, because of all the dangers, then got that goofy sly look and mumbled about other things you could do. 

Lazy eye is a good current example. If you look up strabismus, they will tell you that the cause is unknown. This is a lie. If you look up fetal alcohol syndrome, one of the symptoms is strabismus. It may be that there are other causes. But fetal alcohol causes strabismus. If you have a cast to your eye, perhaps your arms and your temper are a little short; chances are Mom was hitting it. Some people might consider this a lapse in good taste, but I think it is preferable to recognize a developmental disorder rather than a hereditary one.

If they were truthful rather than pusillanimous they would say that fetal alcohol is the only known cause of strabismus. 

Writers Workshop

One of the first things you notice is how autobiographical most of the material is. I guess people write about the things that matter to them. One time this guy brought a fairly long manuscript, we are only supposed to read a few pages; he started at the beginning and read all the way to the end. It was about child molestation. At first I was surprised by his imagination, and then it occurred to me that he might actually know his subject. My stomach turned. No one interrupted him or asked him to cut it short. Perhaps the material was gripping or perhaps like me they had all shut down. I don’t remember what he said. At the end he shoved his manuscript back into its manila envelope and awaited our comments. A woman across from me took out a small pistol and shot the man through his forehead. The man next to me said:
-Mine is really short.

Meat and Milk

For thousands of years Jews have had a prohibition against mixing meat with milk. This is a lot of work. It involves separate sets of dishes, and by separate I mean compulsively separate. In the last hundred years some of our rules have found scientific justification. One might suppose that correlations were noticed between behaviors and consequences, but given the short life spans it is puzzling. A lot of this stuff didn’t make sense until we saw germs under the microscope. I can imagine some saying:
-I defecated near the well and nothing happened.
Torah sometimes cloaks common sense rules in mysticism. If they told men that sex after childbirth is bad for the mother it might not have made an impression. I knew an obstetrician whose children were born nine months apart. Telling him:
-She’s unclean, dammit,
might have been more effective. Sorry to go mystical but there is the possibility that the prohibition on mixing meat and milk may one day find hygienic justification. Perhaps we will one day learn that meat and milk affects the bacterial balance in our gut or something. Before dismissing our laws as ridiculous, you should bear in mind that some of the rules made sense, even or especially if we didn’t know why.
I ran across an interesting article:
http://thetorah.com/meat-and-milk-origins-in-the-text/
In summary, the original directive was to hold the spring festival promptly and deliver what you have on hand. This injunction seems a little harsh:
-I don’t care if it’s nursing, kill that baby goat now!
They wanted to emphasize immediate harvest for both Purim and Passover so they repeated it. Then another goof misread the injunction and threw it in with the dietary restrictions, early cut and paste. Out of context it reads:
-Don’t boil the baby goat in the milk of its mother.
I like this explanation; it fits with my view of how things work. To this day we take Bible out of context. It is comforting that this isn’t just recent. Because of this and since we are such neurotics, housewives have been wasting untold eons of labor:
-But it reinforced your identity.
Talmud isn’t much help, a lot of blather about parts per thousand. This indicates to me that most people thought this silly.
Still these passages survived interminable manual transcription and edit. I think most people reading the text have an image of shepherds feeling a mammalian kinship with their flock. That seems awfully sweet. Which does make it suspect. But we are not talking about the shepherds any more but the scribes doing the transcription.
This would make the neurotic response of dietary prohibition a reaction against recognizing our kinship with our livestock. The proper generalization of the normative interpretation would be to quit tormenting our food: catch and release, veal, factory farms, and farcie.
I’ve always thought ice cream would go well at Passover.
This reminds me of a story: There was a woman who was a concentration camp guard. After the war she came to Los Angeles and married a Jew. After many years he died and it somehow came out that she had been a war criminal and she was deported. At which point the women said:
-Hasn’t she suffered enough?

Subversion

I doubt that most of you still read newspapers. This Sunday we read the Tribune in bed while drinking coffee. Christine did have her laptop, which she used to plan our bike trip. Then she spoiled the day by dragging me bicycling in the forest preserves.
It is not surprising that the Tribune has endorsed Rauner a Republican for the position of governor over Quinn a Democrat. It would be remarkable if they had chosen the opposite. The Tribune has always been a Republican paper. I suspect that their decision has far more to do with association than ideology or tradition. Their justification for the decision is that they regard Rauner as the more subversive candidate; that he will:
-Shake things up.
Illinois recently suffered another governor embarrassment when it was determined that we had elected a flat out crook. The embarrassment was that while Blagojevich was eager to sell, he didn’t have anything worth buying. That is how irrelevant the governor’s office is.
The Tribune is of the opinion that Rauner’s wealth will somehow make the office useful. I can only suppose that he is personally going to buy the legislature. If that is the plan then I fail to see why he needs the governor’s office. Perhaps it is a cost saving measure.
The Tribune puts me in mind of serfs living under the Duke or Baron:
-Yes, my first child is his, but I know he has our greater good at heart.
Given that there wasn’t much choice this attitude was understandable. Nowadays it is pathetic. Everything Rauner has done has been to his profit. Why would he suddenly become altruistic?
His opponent Quinn is dismissed as a go-along hack. I can remember when he used to be dismissed as an idealist. Dismissing Quinn is dismissing the whole political process. Poor Quinn was always the good kid who did his homework and never got in trouble.
Speaking of political process the Illiana toll way project seems to have everybody jumping in different directions. New roads seem to arouse the strongest feelings. I was surprised that Quinn had taken a position on it. Normally smart politicians talk about boards and process that is they duck. But that is the kind of wonk Quinn is. I’m sure he has given it his earnest consideration evaluating all the aspects and decided that this road is good for the state without considering that his view isn’t likely to have much impact and can only cost him votes. Rauner hasn’t said a word about the project.
Apparently trucking firms want the toll way and farmers don’t. In the past sentiment may have favored farmers but nowadays agriculture is an industry just like trucking, and both vote.
I admit to having sympathy for subversion. But subverting the political process is subverting the means we have for making these decisions collectively.
Before Christine and I went bicycling we visited Adlai Stevenson’s home in Mettawa, Illinois. One of the mean things Jake Arvey did was switching Stevenson with Douglas. Stevenson was supposed to be Senator, Douglas who understood state politics was supposed to be governor. Instead Stevenson’s first political office was governor of Illinois. The major problem Stevenson had running for president was that he seemed unable to make specific promises. This may have been because as governor of Illinois it was difficult to actually deliver anything. Both Rauner and Quinn are having the same problem.

Museums

Trip Advisor recently picked The Art Institute of Chicago as its best museum. I like museums that have a flavor of subversion to them. The worst museum in the world might be Epcot Center. It doesn’t claim museum status but it is supposed to represent Future World, sort of a perpetual exposition. There is nothing subversive about Epcot. Drained of content it is nothing more than a people containment facility, which may well represent their view of the future.
My current favorite is the Door County Historical Museum in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. It is jammed with the usual historical knickknacks. They have a discussion of fish boils. There is also a fascinating wildlife diorama constructed by a true obsessive. In the middle of the museum is a leftover jail cell with the key. While I was there a girl locked her little brother in it. What little girl hasn’t wished to do that? That is what a museum is for.
My favorite exhibit is the Mathematica Exhibit. It has moved around a bit. Originally built by IBM, I saw it when it was at the Museum of Science and industry in Chicago. You might pass through thinking it hopelessly arcane. The fun part is when you see a child suddenly become distracted and stare raptly at one of the displays. I have no idea if the little darling is actually getting anything or just trying to get a rise out of their parents. Maybe they are just watching the little car going around the Mobius strip. The parents get agitated. It disturbs them that their child might actually have an interest in the exhibit. They try to distract the kid, draw them on, and practically drag them out. That is what a museum is for.
The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has a Christmas show, Star of Wonder. After they have gathered the rubes in and ensconced them in their seats, they roll the stars back to the way they were around the birth of Christ. Then they patiently explain to them that the most likely explanation of the “Christmas Star” was a conjunction of planets in the Persian Zodiac. I doubt that most of the patrons are going to consider why the Biblical authors glossed over a zodiac event as the precursor of Christianity. But still, that is what a museum is for.
George Lucas is going to build another museum on the Chicago museum campus, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. It will house his Star Wars and Norman Rockwell collection. Museums are, of course, the expression of the egotism of their benefactors. Any city that features the Rubloff Paper Weight collection at the Art Institute can’t turn its nose up.
The Lucas project has all the indications of a disaster. The more fascinating the museum’s building, the less interesting the exhibits. The new Lucas building looks to be a humdinger. There is Opposition of Friends of The Parks, and Better Government Association. To his credit Lucas is proposing 3000 underground parking spaces. Scary that they will be built in a waste dump dating from the Chicago fire. Old waste dumps are not always safe waste dumps. An outside architect has been brought in all the way from China. This is probably payback for all the work China has given our architects. But the only time our architects are that generous is when they are afraid the project is going to hurt their reputation and future sales. We have a history of fall guy architects being brought in for difficult clients with disastrous projects: Benjamin T. Wood from Boston for Soldier Field, Moriyama & Teshima from Toronto for 10 S LaSalle. If they are far enough away people will know that the fall guy had a big project in Chicago and not that it is loathed.
My greatest fear is that the museum will be popular. I don’t want the museum campus to feel like Epcot.

Termination of Pregnancy

At the end of 1971 the draft had ended and my school no longer had any ethical reason to keep me and I flunked out. At the beginning of 1972 I obtained employment as a medical records clerk at University of Chicago Hospitals. The mother of a girlfriend quit her job as an admitting clerk in the hospital and recommended me as a replacement. So part way through 1972 I became the night admitting clerk working from midnight to 8 in the morning at Chicago Lying In, the obstetrics and gynecology hospital at University of Chicago Hospitals.
Termination of pregnancy was illegal and every few weeks I would admit from one to three emergency patients for botched abortions. I suppose the illegal operation would do all its patients on those particular evenings. After a few months it dawned on me that those I admitted were the ones who had made it to the emergency room and if there were these many botched procedures there must be others who had not made it to the emergency room.
At that point I prayed. I’ve prayed twice in my life and the second time was selfish and stupid. But the first time I prayed for abortion to be legal. My argument was that it is better to lose one than two.
There was a miracle and abortion became legal.
Chicago Lying In had five floors. The top floor was surgery, labor and delivery. The fourth floor was unscheduled admissions, 14 beds. The third floor was 33 beds of moms. The second floor was 22 beds of scheduled admissions. The first floor was administration and clinics. We operated pretty much at capacity and there were nights when we refused emergency admissions because we didn’t have a bed.
When abortion became legal the second floor was empty for a month. Then we used it for second trimester terminations.

One Shot Mosquito

My job is to find some way to keep the mosquito from spreading malaria.
Mosquitoes evolved from biting flies. Over time, they developed efficient ways to extract blood, and became dependent on it for the nutrients for breeding. Their life cycle hints at a difficult and complex evolution. They are the essential vector for malaria. Malaria also has a complex life cycle hinting at a complex evolution in the company of the mosquito.
There has been a lot of futile research attempting to attack malaria directly. The research is futile because of malarias’ different life cycle changes. The plasmodium parasite has too many life stages. Singling out any particular one leaves the others and your medicine fails. If you wish to attack malaria then you must attack the mosquito.
Malaria is one of the major detriments to human progress in the world. The genetic human disorder of sickle cell disease evolved as a natural defense to the scourge of malaria.
In a time when so many species have perished in the face of human encroachment the mosquito persists, even thrives. Perhaps someday we will eradicate this annoying and dangerous parasite. There is no shortage of species of fly, the loss of one or two would not be missed.
You may be surprised at the altruism of drug companies and foundations willing to sponsor research that has so little potential for profit. Well you should be. It is the treatment of disease, rather than eradication that is profitable. But it has become vital for the development of the oil reserves in Africa, in particular Somalia, for us to be seen as benefactors rather than mere colonialists. A victory in this area would more than justify the investment if it were properly presented and packaged.
-How can we help you my African brothers? Oh I know, research!
The effort itself may well be rewarded. Success could lead to development of previously inhospitable jungle.
Then we could worry about the ecological impact.
What can we do? The mosquito feeds, lays eggs, then repeats the process. The repetition spreads disease. How often does the mosquito repeat its egg laying? Not that often, the laying of eggs requires tremendous effort. It is the feeding that the mosquito repeats. How to minimize the occurrence of feeding? It must have bigger meals. Then it must compete with its sipping cousin for habitat, crowding it out.
What astounding arrogance to redesign such a perfect and well-adapted organism. We do it all the time with many different species. But it is amazing. How to select for the quality I desire? Provide the mosquitoes with a short meal and then keep the ones that breed. Then repeat the process. It’s not enough of course. Simply stressing one quality does not assure the adaptability and survival of the variety we seek. We can create hybrids of various species, all the while testing for improvement.
Now that we have the genome mapped, we can create throwbacks, ancient varieties, evolutionary dead ends that may be more successful in meeting our criteria. We tend to think of evolution as a process of optimization. It is really more of a process of accommodation. All sorts of possibilities have been tested, but not necessarily fairly or on their own merits.
With luck and of course persistence and some resourcefulness it was created: the perfect one-shot mosquito. Malaria would be at an end. Imagine the euphoria. It is rare that we have an opportunity in our professional lives to actually accomplish something. People take pride, as best they can, in whatever accomplishments they may have. This will change the world. It is meant to change the world. It will accomplish its purpose. No stumbling. No backing into it. We knew what we had to do. We mapped it out and then we did it. It’s never that simple. When a mosquito takes that large a meal, it leaves a welt. That is to say, it leaves a large; quite often permanent scar. The legal department was scathing.
-Okay, we’re not making any money on this, and everybody in the world will sue us.
I wish I could tell you that I was awash in idealism. That I was thinking of some large eyed African child shivering from fever. I don’t know anybody like that. I was overcome with righteous indignation against the mammoth corporate interests who were making these cynical decisions about our future purely on the principle of protecting their own careers. Actually, I like mammoth corporate interests who pay my salary and I want them to keep doing it.
It wasn’t pride. Or at least I’m not admitting to that. If I’m ever asked, I’ll say it was for Somali oil. Maybe it was simply because I could. I rolled up my sleeve, inserted my arm into their container and allowed the monsters to feed. Then I removed my arm, allowing them to remain, rolled down my shirtsleeve and walked outside. After their release, I went back for the males. I hope that the plasmodium parasite doesn’t pass along mosquito generations.

Kentucky Campaign

Christine dragged me through Kentucky this spring, and I strongly recommend it unless you dislike Bourbon, heat and bicycling through beautiful, hilly country. I don’t mind Bourbon. The greatest liabilities are the fried food and the pollen count. I found the reverence for the Civil War particularly irksome. I would have thought knowledge of that history would be accompanied by deep shame and bitter regret.
They are planning to commemorate the Confederate assault on Frankfort, the state’s capital. This would kind of be like Chicago commemorating the Memorial Day massacre.
In Kentucky they make a point of saying how Lincoln revered Henry Clay as the great compromiser. That Clay delayed the onset of the Civil War until the North had sufficient resources to win.
Most historians regard the Southern Rebellion as yet another doomed cause. The industrialized North clearly superior to the doomed agrarian South, besotted with their romantic notions of cavalry. The Southern fantasy is worse than that. The only hope for slavery is if the North is beaten into returning runaway slaves. The South cannot accomplish that on their own and dream they can convince France and England to come in on their side.
But if you review the campaigns you will find that the great majority are offensive campaigns conducted by the North. People look at the casualty rates and assume that Northern generals are incompetent. When you recognize that the North is on the offensive, attacking entrenched Southern positions, the counts are not as impressive. It was more difficult to attack than defend.
The South had little interest in Northern territory. The closer to Canada, the more likely their slaves will flee. One controversial question concerns the Gettysburg campaign. Some argue that the Southern objective was a shoe factory. In general, there was little point in Southern raids, abandoning their defensive positions for great risk and losses unless there was something material to be seized.
For instance, the South never took Washington DC. It seems entirely reasonable that sufficient men and material devoted to such a purpose would succeed. But victory would only have further enraged the North much as Ft. Sumter did, and any losses of leadership may have led to more competent replacements.
This is not to suggest that the South had any hope of winning. I will go further. Regardless of when the Civil War was fought, or how it was fought, the moment the North supports emancipation, the South has lost. Once slaves have some certitude of sanctuary, the Southern cause is over. The great shame of the Civil War was that it took the North so long to recognize that.
The confusion on this point is that people consider the Proclamation or even the Amendment as the start of emancipation. The moment the South secedes, emancipation is inevitable. But if you must have a proper date then the First Confiscation Act of 1861 will mark the moment of Southern defeat. If you consider the refusal of General Butler to return fugitive slaves, which became Union policy, then it was even earlier.
Part of the reason for the South’s failure is the same as in the American Revolution. Regardless of other objectives the South has to maintain sufficient local garrison to forestall slave uprising. This is why the South did so poorly against the British and why Washington was reluctant to even go as far south as Yorktown. The French had to push him into it.
Of the various offensive Southern campaigns, Jackson’s Valley Campaign is the most celebrated. It had the secondary objective of taking booty and the primary objective of delaying the taking of Vicksburg.
Lee’s ridiculous Maryland campaign had the primary objective of seizing supplies and slaves. It was punitive: punishing a slave (Catholic) state for staying in the Union. Given the South’s strategic situation it helped hasten their loss and can only be understood as revenge for the North’s earlier assault, the continuing process of emancipation, and hubris over Jackson’s earlier campaign. While the Maryland campaign satisfied the tactical objective of provisioning Lee’s army, it was a political disaster. The people of Maryland no longer had any illusions about their status with the South.
The reason that Maryland was part of the Union was my favorite general, afore mentioned Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler. After logistics, the most difficult military task is pacification, the suppression of a hostile population. Pacification was Butler’s specialty. In defiance of his superior officer, Scott, he seized and maintained bases throughout Maryland and intimidated the population into compliance. After Maryland, he was assigned to New Orleans, which he held. Farragut took New Orleans, Butler held it. Towards the end of the war he was set up. Assigned a generals task of assault, he looked at the breastworks and saw little point. The North had won, the South was starving, and patience would succeed.
If, by some miracle, Butler had been in charge of Reconstruction, he would have been even more filthy rich. He was totally corrupt, what you see is what he was: the devil himself. But if Beast Butler could have led Reconstruction, the country would be far better for it.
The Gettysburg campaign was systemic pillaging. By that point in the war, looting the North was the only way Lee could supply his army. Lee was willing to endure the casualties because he had to either lose his men or feed them.
To understand the Kentucky campaigns understand that Kentucky was a slave breeding state. The plantation states to the south used up their slaves in hard work. The northern slave holding states made up the difference to their profit. Their representatives, including Clay, opposed the importation of slaves and spoke of the “eventual” end of slavery, but in the meantime made money selling their slaves south.
Since Kentucky was in the Union, any freedmen, slaves, horses or livestock found there were war prizes. The South went into Kentucky like a mob trashing Best Buy. Frankfort is proud that 40 volunteers held off General Morgan and his troops until the Union Army could arrive. I don’t know if they will explain that they were protecting their property.
My views on this are not novel or remarkable. If you had spoken to any abolitionist of the time, they would tell you the exact same thing.

Gravity

Nothing against Cate Blanchett, besides her difficult name but Bullock and Clooney were robbed. Gravity received precisely the wrong awards. Bullock and Clooney sold a ridiculous film.
It’s dangerous to credulity to have science fiction slightly in the future. Tyson has already pointed out the hair issue, so I was ready for that. But the idea of somebody being able to grab anything not specifically designed for it with a pressurized glove was a total fail. Maybe they could loop their arm through something. The second time Bullock flipped on a hatch, I had to laugh, not exactly a quick learner. Not since Raging Bull have I enjoyed an actor getting slapped around so much. An astronaut estimating docking with a space station was outrageous. Try grabbing a speeding freight train and you get the idea. F=MA. People, who don’t understand that equation, and the resultant integration, think that they can somehow brace themselves rather than wear seat belts. We are talking about tonnage against pounds. Tonnage wins. This should have turned into a Brian De Palma film with a bloody arm stump.
They tried to address the issue by having them bump around a bit. But there is a huge difference between addressing the issue and meeting the issue. Any difference in speed and they are missing body parts. No resistance issues. Use whatever glancing angle you like. Take the ratios of the velocity less 1, because there isn’t any bounce, just a sploosh. Given that they are both going very fast at pretty much the same speed, the ratio is small. It doesn’t matter when you are multiplying it by hundreds of tons. My most optimistic calculation has them flattened by a truck.
It was Bullock and Clooney that somehow got me through this film with the silly dialogue. Because of them, I was able to suspend disbelief, at least until she somehow found two separate custom designed space suits conveniently left behind for her. If you think one size fits all panty hose is a cruel joke, imagine an adjustable space suit. I guess they thought it was more unbelievable that she could recharge the air on the space suit she had. It is too unlikely that there would be a standard air supply system. China manufactures three separate versions for each of us.
I have a little trouble with someone in an oxygen deprived coma waking up and turning their air back on. Christine wasn’t too happy with Bullock’s choice of skivvies surrounded by all those metal objects.
I did like the Chinese joke about their ejection module being a copy of ours.

LVH2OSKI-

Password restriction rules are Vogon. The initial problem is that people choose simple passwords that are easy to remember. It’s like locking the screen door to let in the breeze. But when you restrict the universe of passwords that people can choose from you make it easier to hack. The fallacy is to apply the tougher passwords to the original universe of all passwords. People are still going to use passwords that they can remember within the more difficult rules. If you dumped the password files in the more restrictive environments you will find the same amount of redundancy.
Before you start counting up the permutations, consider your own passwords, hopefully you have more than one. I’m sure that several of them are clever phrases that you believe are unique and fall within the restrictions. mIright?

Countable

In second grade our teacher Ms. Bowers introduced us to Cantor’s diagonal proofs. You are already familiar with this, of course. The rational numbers, the fractions, are listed with 1/1, ½, 1/3… on the top row, 1/1, 2/1, 3/1… in the first column and the diagonals always equal to 1: 1/1, 2/2, 3/3… and all the fractions in between. Then Cantor counts them by going up and down diagonally, zig-zagging between them. All the second graders accepted that. Then she showed us that the real numbers, say all the real numbers between .0000… and .9999…., were uncountable because no matter which way we listed them, she could generate a new one by going down the diagonal going on to infinity and generating a new one. Cantor liked diagonals.
I may have lost some of you. I think the reason we got this as second graders is because we knew that if Ms. Bowers was explaining this to us, it couldn’t be that complicated. But adults believe that this stuff should be difficult. So if you don’t get this, don’t feel bad, it just means you are old.
She then told us that it is impossible to prove that there is not an order of infinity between the countable and uncountable. It turns out that almost anytime you can’t prove anything in mathematics it is equivalent to this continuum hypothesis. So after all this work, we are left with yet another metaphor for life. Which seems like a lot of work to get there and it isn’t like there is a shortage of metaphors for life.
Back in second grade a kid came up to me and said:
-If you take all the real numbers of one decimal place, .0 through .9, there aren’t any others. You can’t insert any. Then if you go up by number of decimal places, .00 through .99 and so on, you will get to infinity which makes the real numbers countable.
-Those aren’t numbers, they are parts of numbers.
I told him.
-Then I will pad them with zeroes.
-Then I will insert a new one.
-Not if you follow my rules. It is just a matter of definition.
-Is not.
-Is so.
If you want to make a mathematician uncomfortable, tell them about this assertion made back in second grade. Part of the reason that they will be uncomfortable is that the foundations are shaky. I believe that this assertion is not equivalent to the continuum hypothesis, because it obviates the hypothesis. I suppose it would be boring if the real numbers were countable.
If one day this assertion is proven, proven would mean that most mathematicians agreed with it, which might happen if countable real numbers solved some other problem. If that happened it doesn’t mean that something else isn’t uncountable. But another reason that they would be uncomfortable is that it suggests that most of the high level mathematics done in the last century was a huge waste of time. My girlfriend Christine could have told you that in the first place.

Jackasses Drive Drunk

Your tattoo is ugly and stupid.
Your butt is so big because it gets the most use.
Plastic surgery looks goofy.
Loud is dumb.
Check your medications, check them again.
You are fat because you eat too much.
Cubs fans are losers.
Maybe if you move far away, people will think you are interesting, maybe not.
I hope you trip on those pants.
I hope you fall off those shoes.
No one wants to hear it, any of it.
Your poor kids are just as dumb and ugly as you.
If you are that sick you might as well die.
Everyone is lying to you.
God hates you and she is right.
The louder you play it, the deafer you get.
You are annoying.
You would make a lot more with an engineering degree.
You are a lousy driver.
It’s just sex.
It’s just money.
Your house is boring.
Lesbians in a relationship disappear because they can’t get out the door.
Please don’t friend me.
Strauss sucks.
It’s you.
You are irritating, yes you are.
You really don’t want to be noticed.
If women ever discover short hair, flat shoes, wallets and pockets, we will have no advantage.
Be grateful for pity fucks.
Being angry doesn’t make you right.
Just watch the TV.
If mom don’t want you, you can’t come.
There is no food in Indiana or Mississippi.
Mozzarella only
He’d better be gay.
Hope it heals.
If we were married, I’d get a divorce.
Steroid use causes brain tumors.
Most birth defects are developmental.
More for me
You’d better work on nice and good because you’ll get caught at anything else.
Video games do not prepare you for anything useful.
You are exactly as special as everybody else.
Do their butts feel sticky in heaven? Do they miss it?
It is difficult to take logic seriously when it so easily leads to suicide.
Let the lord be the lord and be grateful.
You are the problem.
No gift cards.

Romney 3.9 Percentage Points Behind Obama

It is obvious by now that both Obama and Romney campaigns were trying to keep the race as close as possible in order to maximize fund raising. Our political campaigns are in the potlatch tradition. They provide the means for us to make payouts within the tax code without the appearance of impropriety. Very little of the activity has much to do with influencing votes.

Dick Morris, the manic-depressive Delphi, argues that the United States electorate should be romanced like an adolescent with a constant barrage of upbeat optimism.

When we step back from all the clutter there appear to be some fundamentals driving the voting choice. I believe that we can build a model for these beliefs based on our history. It is generally held that we Americans have no historical sense or memory but I contend that we do have a mythology based on our collective memory of historical events.

One of our collective modern issues is that most of us, at least below a certain age, have never been in a true drag out physical fight. In the past, one of the earliest lessons learned on the playground was that you can be right and you can lose the fight. Conversely you can be wrong, and you can win. Deprived of practical experience and subjected to constant bombardment of TV people seem to have confused winning with moral superiority. A classic example is the statement:

-We were wrong to go to war in Vietnam because we lost.

The “because” is the fallacy. We may well have been wrong, and we certainly lost but that is not the reason.

Unions are a good example. The success of unions in the thirties and forties was met by legislation restricting trade unions, wild cat strikes and boycotts. Once the union movement was stifled most people took the position that unions were no good because they failed. I have yet to hear a free-market proponent call for unleashing our unions because international competition will keep them in check.

This moral vindication paradox is the reason that the Romney people speak of disillusionment. For them Obama’s ideals must be invalid because they were not implemented.

Looking back in recent memory, who were the best and worst presidents? Over time presidents that were reviled have become sainted and the accomplishments of the heroes have been lost.
Eisenhower looks pretty good, getting the troops out of Korea and into Little Rock. He was a general, he excelled at using the minimum force necessary to flip governments, suppress rebellions and put out brush fires around the world. Later, however, each of his successes became new and greater conflagrations. Much as we have come to realize that we need brush fires to prevent catastrophes, stifling national autonomy leads to eventual global crisis. Eisenhower, because of his competence, may have been our worst president.

Kennedy is the most frightening, by his own count taking us to the edge of nuclear destruction three separate times. The portrayal of Kennedy and his brother as idealistic has once again conflated idealism with recklessness.

Nixon has the greatest infamy, but he was handed the worst mess in recent history. He blew smoke, kicked sand and somehow bluffed us through our international bankruptcy while convincing the China lobby to go along with recognizing China and the strategy of Vietnamizing the war.

Bush Senior is another who pulled us out of disaster. Clinton gets the credit for sticking to the course that Bush set.

Given this history, it is not surprising that Americans almost preferred a lying double talker to a party ideologue.

How can you criticize someone for selling out his ideals when the ideals are so rotten? Good for Romney, taking the tease party for a ride with that ridiculous platform.

The one group I really disliked from the Vietnam War was the Vets for Peace. They would always start their speech by saying that they didn’t know what they were getting into when they went off to war. Talk about not listening. What did they think the peace movement was carrying on about? This passionate naiveté is our worst quality. Please don’t tell me you didn’t know that going up to Tyson’s hotel room would end badly. The Vietnam War wasn’t Johnson’s mistake. It was the price Johnson paid to the China lobby for backing his legislation. Being disappointed with Nixon’s illegal activities is a howler. Who would have thought that big spender, fight anyone anywhere Bush Jr. would lead to fiscal disaster?

I suppose that the voters were frightened that Romney might actually believe that his platform had popular support, rather than that we were hoping for his betrayal of it.

Veteran Grandfather

Fritz, as Grandmother Hilda called him, his name was Fred, served as a lieutenant in the German army in World War I. He served on the western front, so he may have been fighting Americans. He won the Iron cross:

-Everyone went over the top, except me and this other fellow. So, we looked at each other and decided it was better to be killed by the enemy than our own side. The job of the second line of the German army was to kill anyone in the first line who didn’t attack. We couldn’t find our guys, so we kept going; the other side must have withdrawn. Eventually our side caught up with us, so they gave us the medal.

Years later, I realized that this is the story you tell when you don’t want to say what you did.

When Fritz got taken into concentration camp, he wore that cross. They took it away from him. Hilda bribed a consulate for visas and got him and her family out of Germany. He was very calm describing the conditions in the camp except when he talked about them taking the cross.

Plasticene Porters

When you’re talking about police and soldiers, you’re essentially talking about a lot of guys who like to play Call Of Duty and Halo. It is difficult to appreciate the level of hypocrisy they confront and the depth of compartmentalization that this requires. Most of us at some fundamental level believe that there is some equitability or justice that plays its way out. This deep human desire is one of the foundations of religion. Whether it is reincarnation, heaven, rapture, eventual human development, fatalism or just the naïve joy at seeing the downfall of the wicked and horror at the victimization of the innocent, we all want the world to confirm our human perception of right and wrong. Justice, as any other ideal, is found as common or as rare and beautiful as your perception of it. The police dilemma is more extreme than the accommodations that we all make. Because of their situation, they stare into this moral disjoint every day and it can drive them mad. A good day for a police officer might be five driving under the influence arrests. They may have saved lives, or ruined someone’s career, pondering leads to folly.

They are essentially a clerk with a gun, collecting data for their bosses spread sheet and power point presentation. As Mayor Richard J. Daley said:
-The police are not here to create disorder; they’re here to preserve dis order.
We are all in the vise between judgment and obedience. Usually, the consequences are not as extreme.

Normally police are about making the case. Once they have identified a crime and a perpetrator, they gather, secure and present the evidence for the purpose of conviction and sentencing. It gets trickier when they attempt to be preemptive.

People dismiss the National Security Agency PRISM operation because they do not consider the implications of surveillance. Imagine, for whatever reason, that you have become worthy. It could be your actions, your associations, or error, but for whatever reason, you have made the list. Your surveillance is not inexpensive; at the very least it involves administration, audit and review. At some point it becomes cheaper to send around a person.
That person writes a report. That individual is now an informant. You are their subject. Their activity may be as innocuous as calling to see if you are at the same address. They may strike up an acquaintance with you. They may be a friend or business associate. They may be a date. They may be family.

A business may hire you. This is perhaps the most effective and efficient means of surveillance. Your employer has the right to all your personal records. They can account for all your activity during your work time. Conversely employment, or promotion, may be denied you. Obviously your academic career can also be determined for you. If you want to know about someone you can’t passively watch them. You have to be involved in their life.

Do you have a life? Have you made any decisions? Have you dated? Quantitative change leads to qualitative change. Defenses against paranoia collapse against multibillion budgets. As to intent, consider COINTELPRO, the FBI program descended from Elliot Ness who learned his tricks from Irish policemen. Since the data is there it would be silly not to collect it. Once you have the intelligence it would be irresponsible not to use it. Perhaps this errant young person needs a job, or perhaps they should lose one. Maybe a little match making would distract them. Maybe if these groups fought each other, it would take some of the piss out of them. The example of Linus Pauling being denied a visa to visit England, preventing his participation in DNA research comes to mind.

Imagine you were the one charged with tracking a group of subjects, your very own Sims. What lives would you choose for them? Forget big brother, this is big mother. Do you want to increase your budget by provoking radicalism? Or demonstrate your efficiency by frustrating it?

I can see all the wealthy, influential, famous or even attractive readers raising their two fingers in sarcastic violin bow serenades. Deceit and swindle is of course common. It is human nature to be manipulative. Even ownership of a digital device can make you fair game. There are many with black marks on their permanent record: DUI, sex offender, felony conviction, bankrupt. Why should subversives get legal dispensation even if they have yet to be convicted of a crime? Whether they have alerted some data mining analyst through their multiple degrees of separation, patterns of consumption, ill-considered observations, or mean-spirited informants, they share many companions amongst those who have lost their privacy and legal protection.

The difference is one of scale. People Magazine and Equifax, for all their spite, do not have the resources of the National Security Agency, although they may share them. More to your self-interest, how do you know that you are not one of the subversives? It was asked how many American citizens are under surveillance. The question was refused as classified. The correct answer is, of course, all.

How do you build democratic controls on a totalitarian process? It is difficult for Americans to have an ideology, although it may occur implicitly. We have rounded up various groups in our history: Japanese, union organizers, Native Americans, Confederate sympathizers, runaway slaves, Tories.

Cost cutting is a possibility. At some point it may occur to the committees that it is cheaper to remove all these irritants rather than follow them. The metadata allows for more efficient scrubbing.

More likely, eventually some practical person will make the point that crime and corruption are far more dangerous to our nation than mere terrorism. When analysts are able to find obvious criminal activity, perhaps in some cases aiding and abetting terrorism or in the enormous grey areas of overseas business activity, for instance, it would be a shame not to tip off investigators. Could NSA be of use in a kidnapping or murder investigation? Can they cross reference IRS data? Comparing reported income to expenditure comes to mind. In general the trend has been to ignore constitutional niceties in the aid of effective prosecution.

When I first wrote this, the DEA use of PRISM was not known. The DEA very practically came up with parallel construction in order to conceal their information source. I now predict some prosecutor is going to subpoena PRISM data, probably from a phone company, for a local investigation. Once you realize that phone companies use bit compression to transmit conversations then it becomes obvious that all these conversations could be saved. If they can do it, then they have done it.

Could we at last have accurate financial models?

Teachable Moments

I am not going to get into the issues of truth and justice because I am not a good advocate for that. I think there are some teachable moments in the Martin/Zimmerman case. It is so rare that children might pay attention to us older folk and this instance may give an opportunity.

Given that all phone calls are recorded it seems to me that Mr. Martin’s last call should be subpoenaed from the phone company. There was some doubt about testimony that could be answered and it would give a more reliable timeline of events as well as state of mind. The precise GPS coordinates may be helpful as well.
http://open.salon.com/blog/paul_j_orourke/2013/07/17/where_was_trayvon_the_missing_minutes

There has been an observation that the administrations characterization of vigilante justice could also be applied to our foreign policy:http://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/holders_amazing_anti_drone_war_speech/
I think we should hunt down all vigilantes.

There has been condemnation of Florida as unusual. This may be. But the slaughter of young black men is not that particular as to place. In Chicago such events are categorized as gang violence regardless of circumstance. The thinking is that the families do not need the additional pain of knowing that their children were engaged in wrongdoing.

In Chicago Mr. Zimmerman would have been found guilty because he was out looking for it. In Chicago we go to great lengths to appear unpremeditated:
-So why did you have a baseball bat?
-I was coming from a game.
-At 3: AM?
-I was out afterwards and I didn’t want to drive.

Mr. Zimmerman was concerned about a rash of successful burglaries in his area. Since the burglaries were successful it is likely that they were a neighbor rather than someone passing through. Probably someone in the citizen watch group as they have the interest and the time. I am curious as to whether the burglaries have continued.

If you can get the children’s attention it might be worthwhile to point out that young Martin had a tool in his hand, not just an emotional support system. I realize that this is a difficult concept. What would have happened if either of the children on their call had suddenly realized that it was appropriate to notify the authorities? I’m not saying that the consequences would have changed but imagine the moment if Martin had handed Zimmerman the phone and said:
-The dispatcher wants to talk to you.

Once both young men had decided to stand their ground the only issue remaining is which one would be left standing. According to Zimmerman, he was on the ground screaming for help. The second dispatcher recording and subsequent testimony raised doubt on this issue. But Zimmerman’s is the only immediate deposition. This brings to mind the advice of my own sweet dear little mother. Physical conflict is not a form of recreation or discussion. Please children, there is no reason to get someone down just to let them get back up again. Whether you run or stand, you were given feet.

Arendt and Community

After Marx, academics had a serious issue: they had to build on his work without referencing it. This isn’t all that different from the difficulty academic psychologists had with Freud. Freud talked goofy and it sounded silly when you were writing grant proposals. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the latest attempt at building a rational sounding justification for talking therapy. Sounds like a prissy version of Freud to me.

With Marx the difficulty was much more immediate. One citation and your funding disappeared. Poor Keynes had to throw in Calculus and talk all the way around his fulcrum to say that if you wanted to keep the game going you had to grab money away from the winners and keep the losers in the game.

Sociology hung onto its journalist roots; that shred of honesty kept it halfway decent. But then they threw in statistics. The real ugliness was when they coopted Marx’s use of the word alienation. Alienation meant losing you inheritance, your position in your family. Marx with his German sense of humor used it to describe tradesmen working an assembly line and no longer owning their tools.

Marx was trying to answer Adam Smith’s division of labor by giving examples of its destruction of people’s self-worth. The only way out Marx could see was for people to take advantage of their forced collectivization to form unions. Communists would later take his description of farm people forced into factory work as a prescription for collectivization with disastrous results.

Sociologists grabbed the alienation word to describe people’s loneliness in society. Loneliness is a real issue but to say you are alienated from society is nonsense. You are your society. If you are not yourself, then who are you? Once they had a specious issue the only thing left is a solution viola: community. A meaningless duality, what could be more perfect for writing grant proposals.

When the baby boom sent a hydraulic stream of undergraduates hurtling into academia, those of a more idealistic bent had the idea that sociology had something to do with solving people’s problems with society. Let the punishment fit the crime. Forced to undergo and regurgitate meaningless prattle to then enter the ranks of the unemployed it is hardly surprising that so many terrorists have sociology degrees.

So, it is discouraging that Arendt’s discussion of Revolution finishes with talking up the committees that form in the developmental process of government. My own experience with boards and associations is bad. It always ends with wondering why all these people hate me. Successful committees are to purpose and transitory. Standing committees are deadening.

I dusted off Revolution because of all these demands demanding that Occupy Whoever come up with demands. Since any agenda becomes the basis for repression we are left with this Dadaist movement. It’s not enough to have a silent majority, now they have to be inarticulate as well.

Columnists keep trying to link Occupy Wall Street with the Tea Party. The fundamental distinction is that the Tea Party hates poor people and OWS doesn’t want to become them.

Arendt argues that political process can’t solve economic inequality. With Marat Sade thundering in the background I believe I understand her argument. But until the messiah comes we have to scrape around and stall off the inevitable savagery predicted by Marx, sort of an American expression of Mao’s perpetual revolution.

Despite the insurance and drug companies, Americans have, as definitively as we ever have, made it clear that we want health care. We can’t all live in hotel rooms surrounded by Mormons. We recognize that our individual health depends on the health of the population, and by the way, mental health is infectious. Usually at this point the majority is respected. Instead we are confronted by these statesmen who are determined to keep the poor out of the middle class. The Tea Party archetype is a franchise owner, SBA loan in hand.

What everyone seems to agree on is that our current process sells too cheap. We’ve played this game for over two hundred years and either our standards have raised or the bosses have wired it too tight. For instance everyone knows drugs should be legal; what chance is there of that? Everyone understands that the process is failing, yet no one states the obvious conclusion: it’s time for a rewrite. The Constitution was predicated on protecting slavery. It is unfair to us to maintain those advantages.

The greatest criticism of representational government is the toll it exacts on candidates. What person wants to beg hundreds, thousands, even millions of people for their job? The whole process was conceived and designed to keep politicians snugly and securely in the hip pockets of the owners and manufacturers. Sociologists sometimes study the dynamics of power, the personalities and character of leaders. They usually are trying to prove that individuals can surmount social process. What they don’t consider is that most leaders belong to someone else and they couldn’t accomplish anything otherwise.

There are two other possibilities: plebiscite and lottery. As Ross Perot said, plebiscite has recently once again become practicable. Just as we maintain online bank accounts we could maintain an online voting account. The proposal of new initiatives could be made sufficiently onerous through petition and consideration. The lovely thing about plebiscite is how auditable it is. Perhaps we could have a third house of congress. It would represent the people’s will directly.

Lottery has the advantage of making corruption more difficult. You have to bribe the official after they have been selected. Executive lottery is perhaps the best way to organize an underground movement, or one subject to oppression, making it more difficult to take over.

I think chance should officially be reintroduced into the court system. Litigious parties, or even criminals, should have the option of flipping a coin or rolling dice.

America was founded on the idea of checks and balances. I don’t think we took that far enough. In particular our military adventures are out of hand. I propose that we assign our military functions to that third house of congress whether plebiscite or not. If it is elected I don’t know what the divisions should be, perhaps something different from geographical. We could give this house its own funding; control of natural resources should be enough money. The idea is that this house would manage our natural resources and foreign affairs. Maybe this could be the new function of the House of Representatives, and the plebiscite would cover the domestic issues, with the Senate over both.

Claiming to be an honest politician reminds me of claiming virginity in a bar. I’ve always been upset with the small sums that congressmen receive for influence. Committeemen in Chicago get more money for zoning variances than Congressmen get for billion dollar spending bills. Separating out the foreign policy and natural resource issues would remove the hypocrisy and put Congress on a realistic footing. Having the entire nation vote on domestic spending authorizations would be a useful restraint.

There are other possibilities: the Senate could be chosen by lottery for fixed terms of longer duration, similar to the Romans. This would isolate political parties to the House and Presidency.

I haven’t figured all this out. It’s going to take those wretched committees, hopefully for a limited period of time, to do that. It will not be perfection, but as a measure, it should be a lot more difficult to conduct imperialist adventures, a lot easier to make drugs legal, TARP would have failed a referendum, the jobs bill would have passed, and Supreme Court judges would be a lot more discrete about being on the take.

In any case, the bar has been raised. When my congressman returns to the district and says they don’t have the votes, I’m going to want to know why they didn’t shut down the government. I take my issues at least as seriously as anyone else takes theirs.

Kinison and Syria

Just recently some Americans from Bulgaria were warning me about the dangers of Muslim immigrants.

I said:
-If we can survive the Irish, we can survive anything.

They responded.
-You don’t understand. They are violent fundamentalists who want to impose their religion on everyone.

Sam Kinison was the comic who made the observation that since people were making poor geographical choices, the solution was not to feed them but bring them somewhere else. In the case of the Irish, the British subjected them to a horrific policy of mono-culture, deprivation and abandonment. The United States did not conduct a military campaign of evacuation, but it came fairly close. It was a terrific social and economic burden for the United States. But it was far preferable to conducting a military campaign against the British on behalf of the Irish, although the Irish may have preferred that solution.

In Syria we have two million Alawites who most likely want to leave. The sooner they get out of there the faster the Sunni can get back to killing each other. Protecting the evacuation and resettling and assimilating them is cheaper and more positive than busting them up and watching them get slaughtered.

More importantly it would be a mature recognition by the American people that our foreign policy has consequences. We helped make this mess. We should help fix it. If we adopted a general policy of accepting refugees, then we could also start to recognize how our policies create refugees.

Bicycle Safety

Someday Bicyclists will have to pass a driver’s test, get a license and have a plate on their bicycle just like motorists. Until then some observations on bicycle safety:

To begin with, ride straight. The bicycle version of the two footed goof who drives with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake is the cyclist who ducks in and out of traffic to keep away from the cars. It is more difficult to keep track of you when you are playing games. If you are hiding from me it is no longer my fault. Just like the two footed moron who thinks they should stop more quickly, the phantom cyclist is un-teachable, certain that they are courteously providing more room.

Next, understand one fundamental fact: you are a nuisance, and the longer I have to be in your company, the more of a nuisance you are. You are not a traffic warden. Police officers and crossing guards take a class in how to direct traffic. You haven’t taken that class. The moment you start waving your hands you have messed up. If you feel obliged to direct traffic no one else is at fault, you are. You have messed up and I sincerely hope that no one is taking direction from an idiot like you. If you don’t want to take your turn at the intersection, then get out of the intersection. Cyclists use hand signals. I suppose it seems a small transition from signaling intent to directing traffic.

I doubt that most drivers care that much about taking turns with bicycles. You are a rolling liability and the sooner you are out of the intersection and on your way the better for the rest of us. Drivers know full well that cyclists run in herds and the idiot in front waving their hands give us no information about the fools behind them. The reason everyone is watching you is because you are a hazard, not an authority.

There are three steps to getting through an intersection safely:

1. Claim the intersection. Don’t shoot through it. Arrive at the intersection and make your claim. This means bringing your bicycle into the circle of people waiting their turn to enter the intersection. Many bicyclists and pedestrians claim the intersection when it is not rightly theirs. That is they enter the circle of consideration when opposing traffic has the right of way. What this accomplishes is that it slows down aforesaid opposing traffic, thus making it more difficult to cross. Obviously you should not claim the intersection if you do not have a legitimate claim. This means staying back. Don’t scare people by edging out when it is not your turn.

2. Once you have claimed the intersection, take the intersection. Everyone is terrified of you. You are riding a bicycle and therefore you must be an idiot. If no one is moving it is your turn to proceed. If you claim the intersection and you do not take the intersection, then you are an asshole. Waving your hands is no help.

3. Get out of the intersection. This is not the time for discussion, deliberation or observation.

Let’s take the most common scenario. Cars are lining up for a light or stop sign. In principle, the bicyclist should take its place behind the last car. Then the following car pulls up next to the cyclist giving them no reward for their courtesy, so experienced cyclists thread the line to move to the front. When they are at the head of the line, the car turns on its right turn signal trapping them both in an endless dialogue of courtesy and terror. I suppose the cyclist should pull up behind the first car in the line, but then they will be cut off by the next car in the line that is also turning and now the second car is following the first car which is sort of an unofficial custom. If the motorist had signaled earlier, alerting the cyclist, then they could have approached the car on the left side. This maneuver seems correct, if a little nervy, but following motorists might feel cut off. On either side of the car the cyclist may stall out because of the oncoming traffic from their left, in the opposite intersecting lane.

I feel some sympathy for the cyclist until they attempt to direct traffic. We have been making it through this intersection without them.

Experienced motorists might defer signaling in the hope that the cyclists would depart and then they could signal and make their turn. At which point they would be smacked by the following laggard cyclist hauling ass to catch up.

I’m pretty sure any decent lawyer would advise the automobile driver to stay put until the idiot has cleared away regardless of how they dance around on their bike. If the driver did succumb to the bicyclists blandishments they may have the emotional satisfaction of seeing the bicyclist collide with the following car while taking what they judge to be their turn. Even with the emotional satisfaction this seems a less than optimal result.

Part of the difficulty is that bicyclists inhabit that nether region between motorist and pedestrian. Because motorists have licenses and are thus operating with state sanction they have greater liability than cyclists who are unlicensed and are therefore lumped with pedestrians. Because they are licensed, motorists are expected know what they are doing.

Bicyclists are supposed to behave as cars, just with a shared lane. On the left hand turn this leaves them in the admittedly uncomfortable position of sitting with the cars in the left hand lane waiting to take their turn. To avoid this discomfort cyclists often return to their pedestrian status and use the cross walks. Unfortunately they do so while on their bikes. This means they start from the motorists right hand blind spot and proceed much more quickly than a pedestrian through the two crosswalks to the intersecting lane. It is interesting that the bicyclists have more confidence that motorists will notice them in this maneuver than parked in the left hand turning lane. Some motorists have the unfortunate habit of creeping into the intersection.

Some cyclists always take the right hand turn if in any doubt. This allows them to avoid stopping. Then they cross the street on a break in traffic and either work their way back or proceed the wrong way on the opposite street until they find a suitable side street. This means that once they’ve made the turn they keep pausing and looking over their shoulder further confusing motorists, then they cross in the middle of the street.

Of course, this list can be elaborated with countless variations and details, which should all be part of that future bicyclists driving test but let us be clear and brief: I don’t like you and you don’t like me. I am an exhaust-spewing automobile that can do you significant harm. You are an increase in my liability insurance. You may think that because you socialize with other cyclists that automobiles should also be in your domain of discussion. It would be better for us both to have as little company as possible.

The League of Illinois Bicyclists has come up with their bicycle safety test. We are not in total agreement, but they do explain the law: http://bikesafetyquiz.com/

Gatsby

My girlfriend’s fixation on the Great Gatsby took us to Sands Point and the Howard Gould estate on Long Island. It became obvious how F. Scott Fitzgerald came to the device of a pedestrian accident. It is just hilly and winding enough to encourage adventurous driving.

It also confirmed my initial premise on reading the book that Gatsby is Jewish. Fitzgerald’s new money/old money is an obvious McGuffin. If money has any sense at all it respects money. Old money is happy to accommodate new money and that is one of the many ways it survives. The bootlegging device is also specious. Many of the wealthy made some investments in this profitable enterprise.

Visiting Hempstead house and hearing of the Gould’s who inspired Fitzgerald’s story it becomes clear that the one great social sin was being Jewish and not knowing your place. The Gould’s and Gatsby are yet more examples of the tragic mulatto. They didn’t see themselves as Jewish and they could not have acceptance as WASPs.

Fitzgerald may have felt that he lacked the ability or qualifications to do the story justice. Or perhaps as the great script doctor that he was, recognized that the story lacked broad appeal. He was correct. The almost pornographic old money/new money device is the emotional underpinning for the story. Everyone has that sense of being the new kid at school and the idea that the wealthy would continue these fruitless distinctions is comforting.

Antisemitism was real, however. I think Daisy works better as a passing Jew as well.

The working definition of old money is inherited wealth and a social support system. This definition would include Donald Trump.

Action Movies

This should be read at poetry slams, open mic events, or wherever writers might congregate.

All movies, romance, comedy or drama are really horror movies. The one thing that cinema does well is draw you into their premise and then surprise and shock you. That sense of outrage as you find yourself sympathizing with the loser, cheering for some victorious social deviant and then realizing its absurdity is what makes movies so entertaining.

The last good action movie I saw was Heathers, the humor, violence and sex seemed believable to me. I liked the premise that adults would accept a rash of teenage suicides that were really homicides. Body Heat was good; the combination of mystery and sympathy for the villains enchanted me. The Three Stooges shorts were a respectable depiction of violence. Most action movies suck. The hero gets captured, the villain gets killed. This is because they have to have the dialogue between the hero and villain. In what way is that realistic? All problems are solved by Karate, guns, or if creativity is called for, large pieces of falling scenery. When has an action movie said, as really happens:
-Quick, get the cash and the lawyers!

I can’t stand the constant monotonous bang-bang boom-boom yell thud scream of the typical action soundtrack pounding the intelligence out of its jaded audience in perpetuum. It would be difficult to make an audience suffer through the explosion of a real gun shot. Guns are loud. One of the problems with shooting a gun is that an explosion has gone off in your hand and it is difficult to keep it steady for the next shot. The famous Dirty Harry “five shots or six” sequence in real life would have gone something like:
-…so the question is, do you feel lucky?
-What?
-What?
One was firing a magnum .44 the other a 12 gauge pump; their ears were ringing. They weren’t talking to anybody.

I think everybody should have the experience of actually firing a gun and trying to make that little bullet go where you want it to in a consistent fashion. It’s not that easy and if you are not wearing ear protection it is not that fun.

Most depictions of hand-to-hand combat are ridiculous. As Jim Harbaugh learned punching Jim Kelly, your hand has a lot of little bones in it and your jaw is a large solid piece of bone. I suppose if you have sufficient practice with various formalized, ritualistic forms of martial arts, it will be possible for you to administer enough impact to the jaw to rattle the brain and bring on concussion without breaking anything in your hand. But I think most people who have experience in such matters would rather use a tool, preferably one that will extend your reach.

Fights are not stylized choreography but a panting crying screaming mess between people who are very upset and scared. Part of the difficulty is that it is almost impossible for cinematography to have enough frames to capture the speed of real movements. So, we are given a series of frames resembling animation.

My biggest complaint is the setting. The Old West or a modern metropolis is not particularly violent. There are times and places in America that were dangerous. If you were a Native American in California during the gold rush your prospects were bleak. Chinese immigrants were often the victims of crimes.

The nature of discrimination was usually that those areas did not receive adequate police protection and enforcement of the law, even when people were arrested, was lax. This meant that if disputes were not settled immediately they were never settled:
-We stomp drunk drivers.

What the movies have done is taken characters and plots out of their original context in order to give them broader appeal. There may have once been a Dirty Harry, but that Irish stereotype was back in the 1930’s at the latest. More recently, in the 40’s and 50’s there was a Two Gun Pete, Sylvester Washington, but you will not find him on the screen. Two Gun Pete was a Chicago policeman who realized that there was little point in making arrests as the courts didn’t care if black people were killing each other. If you were one of the Jones Boys, the gang that ran policy, he would call you up and tell you to turn yourself in. But if you were a common thug he would leave you bleeding out, on the street.

In order to give it broader market violence is stripped of its class, ethnic, racist and gender qualities. For instance, saying a police officer was dirty meant he was on the take. Violence is most often a top down rather than bottom-up endeavor. Offering it as the general solution to social problems only adds further confusion.

South Side Vignette

It was difficult for me working against fourth ward Alderman Timmy Evans. I liked his people. They were better than some, try as they might to distinguish themselves. I was carpet bagging, coming into their precinct/ward from my own ward, the fifth. There are fifty wards in Chicago. You would think that with fifty aldermen it wouldn’t be such a big deal, yet the aldermanic elections are the most hard fought. Mom had called me out at the last minute to poll watch for a new candidate, Toni Preckwinkle. I had to go to my job, so I was more like the old regular democratic workers who showed up in the morning and the night, to check in and get the count. Timmy’s people just wanted their three extra votes. The way it works is that they report their expected vote count. Then Timmy, or whoever, says:
-That’s great, can you get me three more.

This is somewhat insulting. Either you were holding back on your reported count, or you have some magic way of convincing people to change their beliefs and vote for your candidate. A good precinct captain knows how the vote is going to go; they know who votes in their precinct, how they voted in the past and how they are likely to vote in the future. That’s what a precinct captain does.

Three more means steal three votes. This federal crime was routinely committed. The judges didn’t want any fuss so they gave me the option. I guess Tim just wanted the practice; we weren’t going to win this one, so I blessed the three bad ballots, got the count and dropped it off at the Preckwinkle headquarters.

Toni kept running, election after election, until finally Alan Dobry, the fifth ward democratic committeeman, went to the mat for her and sent Timmy off to his judgeship. One of Timmy’s idiots printed up some fliers picking on Toni’s husband and Dobry gathered them up and redistributed them where they would do some good. Since Dobry hadn’t printed them, he broke no laws. Nonetheless, brave Alan received considerable criticism from those who are not good enough to even breathe his air. I think of this whenever I receive solicitations for WTTW. I’m sure my sweet old mother was smiling down on Alan from on high.

In an earlier election, after the first one I was in, but before the one she won, Toni had called on mom when one of her new people was experiencing some difficulty working his precinct. The fourth ward wasn’t near as nice as it is today. He wasn’t sure how to cope and asked for help so Toni sent her best. Mom showed him how to whoop and holler, to let people know you are coming, and stand back from the door after you knocked. I’m not good at canvassing myself, too big I guess. I ask them how they are voting but they just take my literature and smile. What you want voters to do is be comfortable and tell you what they think. Like many things, mom had an easier time teaching this to others than to her sons.

Mom pulled out her old jokes, when people asked for money, she’d laugh and say:
-Well, we don’t have that much, but they do. Don’t vote for free. You know they are giving it out.

I guess it worked; Timmy’s people got some heat from people expecting payment, because eventually Gentleman Tim came by and asked how much it would take for her to go home. Recognizing that a bribe is an implicit threat, mom took the money.

She was very impressed with the new Preckwinkle precinct captain.
-He’s going to be somebody, she told me.
-What’s his name?
-Barack Obama.
-Not with that name, I said.

I think it is worthwhile, now that the elections are over and hopefully no harm can be done, to show that the neighborhood did try to raise the president correctly. Unlike most candidates, Obama has actually been in the trenches and done the work.

The Difference between an Academic and a Scholar

Some years ago, after many academic adventures I found myself taking an introductory programming course as a general requirement for graduation. The best part of the course was the computer problems book. It encapsulated all the uses for a computer up to the undergraduate senior level. I wanted to get my computer programs out of the way at the beginning of the semester so I could clear the decks for the important courses I was taking in mathematics. Several computer program problems were required, but some were electives; they were ranked in order of difficulty. In the back of the book, there was a list of how many lines of code each problem took. Cross referencing each list to get the most credit for the least lines of code lead to the problem called partitions. Partitions was defined as the number of different ways to sum integers to reach another integer. For instance 2 is 1 + 1, 3 is 1 + 1 + 1, 2 + 1, 1 + 2 and so on. The problem was to list the number of partitions for each integer up to twelve.

After a few minutes struggling with pencil and paper, I was back cross referencing the two lists to find a different problem that would maximize my grade with minimal effort. Then I remembered. For I had attended Kenwood High School, Shimer College, Oxford University, University of Chicago, and now I was at Illinois Institute of Technology. So I knew that often books had an index. Looking up partitions in the index, I found a further discussion that gave me the algorithm I needed. I finished my problems, turned them in before the teaching assistants had been coached to be fussy about comments and style, and went on to the rest of my classes. I remember thinking,
-Glad I’ll never have to do that again.

Towards the end of the semester, I noticed that I was missing my good friend Jeremy. We usually met in the cafeteria. He was majoring in biochemistry. I was concerned enough to go to his room and there I found him surrounded by pencils and scraps of paper looking more like a biochemistry major than I had ever seen him before.
-Jeremy, I asked, what are you doing?

At IIT, the most common discussion was “how do you do this problem” so I was not surprised when he held up a book. I was surprised that it was the computer problem book.
-Have you seen this one?
It was partitions.
-Oh Jeremy, the algorithm is further on in the book.
Jeremy’s reaction was inappropriate. He was not filled with joy that he could finish his requirements and go on to make his fortune in bioengineering. Instead, he was angry.
-No, it’s not.
Jeremy was being a scholar. I was being an academic.

Many years later I was the lead computer programmer on a report generation system written by the ancient ones with hairy knuckles. It was in Assembler and used macros to create a user language that generated marketing reports. Some of the reports had gotten so big that they broke the assembler. It used execute channel program (EXCP) processing which was unusual for an application system. The major hog in the system was the newly developed library maintenance system so I used a minor requirement as a justification for cleaning that out. Then I kicked, screamed and pleaded until I received enough resource to foreground test the report system, stepping through it as it ran, rather than trying to puzzle out what it was doing. This allowed us to tackle several issues, opening the door to a rewrite.
We had yet another management change and the new manager who had once worked in our group came to me with an idea of consolidating some of the report functions. I said:
-What’s the cost benefit?
So, one of my junior people became the new project leader. I was being the scholar rather than the academic.

I first noticed this distinction at Shimer in the course Natural Sciences II. We read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Evolution is not a straight forward subject. For instance here I am the product of thousands of years of sexual selection. Obviously something isn't quite working. Or take the fact that I require glasses. You would think that poor vision would select out very quickly. Toward the end of the semester my roommate Carl gave me a quick lesson in how not to read a book. He flipped through the syllabus and said:
-The only thing they can test us on is the Scientific American reprints.
He spent a little under an hour reviewing those and aced the class.

The life of the mind is a dangerous place; it is easy to lose your way, difficult to know where to focus. The academic survives in that world and recognizes the pitfalls and snares. Survival forces him to narrow his focus and search for the payoff. In that sense, trying to learn scholarship from an academic is like trying to learn love from a prostitute.

Can the President Kill People?

The short and simple answer is yes. The various authorities and means available to him are as diverse and varied as our government agencies. Most obviously as Commander in Chief the president commands the military. The military will carry out his orders. The military should also record his orders and report the consequences. Such reports should be available for review by authorized persons making it likely that they will become public.

The military has overcome this oversight in the past by various well-known mechanisms. One legendary example was the order to troops in the Pacific to feed captives from their own rations. Another is to maintain favored units or individuals who well understand that their privileges depend on obedience and discretion. More normally certain areas or endeavors are categorized as off limits and subject to summary execution.

J. Edgar Hoover was a remarkable instance. His homosexuality made him so vulnerable that he would carry out any executive order.

The National Security Agency, now under military authority can carry out any activity approved by a rubber stamp court. Richard Nixon crossed the line when he was caught using NSA authority in his political campaign. At that time the NSA was overseen by a committee rather than a court.

Outside the vast array of military intelligence groups there are seven known US intelligence agencies. The Central Intelligence Agency is unique in the world as the only government agency chartered to operate without pretext or legal protection. Their direction is to not get caught.

The national police agencies include the Treasury, US Marshals, Drug Enforcement Agency, the aforementioned FBI, Forestry and the new TSA.

It seems reasonable given this assortment that the president could find someone to do his bidding.
Kennedy maintained relationships with gangsters, presumably under NSA authority, George W. Bush found it necessary to circumvent review of some of his projects and Franklin Roosevelt worked with British intelligence. Whatever the means, one would think that a reasonably competent government executive could have as much effectiveness as a corporate leader.

Apparently, they just noticed that there is a black guy operating the crane.

Coffee Problem

The major task in marketing is categorization. For instance once you have categorized groceries you can compare the UPC codes sent against the categorized items you have and kick out the ones that are new. Assuming that you have correctly categorized the current ones and no one complains then only the new items are subject to human review. Automating the process utilizing their item description seems like a tempting application until you consider the coffee problem. What is coffee? It is a product, a flavor, a color, and an appliance, at the very least. Cross referencing to the UPC manufacturer code gives an indication but you get the idea.

The general solution to the coffee problem as mentioned above is one that humans routinely use. We cheat. That is, we make use of other information, such as the UPC manufacturer code.

Open Salon has its own version of the coffee problem, the spam issue. How do we distinguish between someone venting their opinion and someone generating gibberish? Perhaps the sheer number of posts or length of posts would be useful. I believe at one point Salon knocked me off because I hit a spam filter. I feel confident that I can recognize spam when I see it. But given that it is automatically generated I see little point in a manual process. Even worse they are malicious. Any screen or guarantee will meet further ingenuity. It is obvious that this is an attack on the site. Whether the justification is search engine optimization or stealing server resource, it is an attack against the commons. What pointless silly futility.

The slush pile is another example. How can a publisher winnow all the authors who want to publish? Again spam filters sound like a good start. “Heaving bosoms”, “communist menace”, “limpid pools”, it seems fun at first. How do we determine a positive result, that something is excellent or at least marketable? It’s difficult enough when people do it. Usually, we follow successful authors. Bayes meets regression to the mean.

The internet itself is the perfect example. The rare joy I feel when I actually find something. It seems like libraries and search engines are in the business of concealment rather than revelation.

On the other hand, think of the poor NSA. What is subversive? What should they be tracking? “Blow up the Pentagon”, “flight training school”, “bushmaster”, what connects to what?

Confusion is the only refuge of freedom.

Liberate Unions

Mark Ames has written a rant against Michigan passing the right to work law:
http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work
Howard Zinn would have been proud.

While all his facts seem correct, he has missed the point about the Wagner act. The reason for all the atrocities he lists and for the Wagner act itself was that the unions were winning. If the unions had been losing the act would not have passed. It is true that violence decreased after the act but that can also be explained as a consequence of the constraint on organizing.

As the act itself makes clear the unions were winning because they had finally developed the rolling wildcat strike and the boycott. It would have been difficult to ban these two super weapons without giving something in return so the strike as an election process was developed.

The established unions were willing to trade because they thought they had won and saw little hope of organizing the rest of the labor force. As we now can see this was a mistake. Even worse they conceded the organizing of trade unions for new industries. A phone marketers union would have to petition for exemption from antitrust law. A company can demand that the company be the bargaining unit rather than a trade.

As Ames himself points out, the current process makes organizing new unions almost impossible. The unions are jailed and the companies are fined. We would be far better off without the department of labor. Is it surprising that the abandonment of the unorganized workers and destruction of our current unions has led to a massive right-wing reaction in America?

Real Estate Tax Deduction

The greatest and most difficult issue facing humanity is social segregation. This issue allows all other issues to fester unaddressed. The fictional town of Pottersville has one significant advantage over our real civic arrangements: Potter lives in Pottersville. The cost per student at The Cairo IL high school is $8,817. In Highland Park IL it is $17,636. That is because education, security, maintenance and recreation are funded by real estate taxes. The corporate ghetto, Oak Brook IL, is organized to minimize services in order to benefit the companies that reside there. Other suburbs minimize their education expenses because only the servants use those schools or the residents are old.

The real estate tax itself could be very progressive. But using it to locally fund our services maximizes the benefits of social segregation.

The cherry on top, isn’t it great to live in America, is that social segregation is then subsidized by our income tax code. Because the real estate tax is deductible, I get to pay more in taxes, or we borrow the difference, to encourage the stratification of our society.

The real estate tax deduction is the most vicious and depraved regulation of our entire tax code.

Chanukah

Chanukah is packaged as some sort of gooey sweet adjunct of Christmas. Maccabees were sick twisted.

 They hated the Greeks. That’s understandable:

-Oh, you have a god; well of course we can include him. 

-He’s the greatest? Hmm, work with me here, we conquered you, right? 

-So, you study the law while we study the world, how interesting.

 
Here you are, proud of reading, writing and developing a sophisticated integrated society and the newbies are in charge, treating you like hicks. What we are celebrating is a fundamentalist homophobic resistance movement engaged in terrorist activities against a modern world civilization.